Page 78 - WTP Vol.X#1

Act Two (continued from preceding page)
Would he pay attention to me beyond saying hello? How would I act if he did? Uneasy and excited, I put on a favorite geometric minidress and walked up to leafy north Oxford.
In a crowded living room in the Victorian house, Joe greeted me warmly and introduced me to a
few of his guests before leaping off to open the door to later arrivals. Holding a glass of red wine,
I laughed with the people I’d been introduced to. Witty remarks, which I could manage, were de ri- geur. We chatted about music, Italian films, politics and everything that students talk about on frivo- lous nights. After twenty minutes or so, while Joe spread his attentions around the room, I slipped into an armchair, setting my glass on a stack of books about Keynesian economics. Several guys who looked like harmless undergraduates Joe had met somewhere stood next to me and we traded jokes about Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his pipe until scudding sounds from a shabby brown sofa cattycorner to me made me turn my head.
A young man whose acne scars only made him look craggy slid closer to his girl as she rubbed his thigh with her knee. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Why couldn’t a man look at me like that? I yearned to be singled out, fondled, caressed. Here I was finally at a party with men and women pair- ing off. I felt my isolation close on me as tightly
as the sides of my armchair as I sank deeper and deeper into it.
Joe probably wasn’t coming back to talk with me. I was just one of many friends he’d gathered to celebrate his birthday. Nothing special. Clenching my teeth, I shook myself out of my funk. I couldn’t just sit there and feel lousy. Something had to be done. I looked around the room. Over a small desk, a large map of the world spread its wings. I’ve al- ways liked maps; they can tell you how far or near one place is from another. The back of my neck itched but I didn’t want to scratch it in this com- pany so I got up and went over to look at the map. On my way I glanced at a guy in a cardigan sweater standing by himself. He seemed disengaged, think- ing his thoughts. I imagined someone intense, slightly hurt. Battling with my instinct to get closer to him, I looked on the map for Ceylon, the tropical island where Mrs. Bed was born, off the coast of In- dia. Such a small place, I thought. But Mrs. Bed was not about to be diminished. My deah, she seemed
to say in my head, you really ought to speak to that young man in the corner. I looked at him again. He didn’t seem to have a woman around him. I met his eyes, grinned a kind of half smile. He smiled back
but neither of us made another move.
Soon after, I gathered up my coat. Joe was deep in conversation with a couple. I didn’t want to disturb him and risk another disappointment, even if he might say he’d come by for tea soon. Clearly, we were only going to be friends.
Outside in the wind, I ruefully remembered other party nights. When I languished as a teenager in
our Jersey summer town, my beautiful friend Suzi sometimes roped me into going to a dancehall on a pier overlooking the ocean. Teens jived to Chubby Checker under flashing lights in the humid, packed room. It was a daunting place for me with my inhibi- tions and very obvious skin disorder. When my artsy friend began to swing her hips with some guy in an Elvis haircut, I edged down the crowded backstairs and meandered home along the beach. The cool water whirred around my scaly feet while I dimly felt I was not part of ordinary life.
Walking home after Joe’s party, I pulled my raincoat collar up around my chin. The fresh air cooled my red cheeks as I passed low brick walls that made the substantial houses, set back from the street, seem far away. Tonight I didn’t have to prepare a face to meet my mother when she asked me, hopeful and despair- ing, “how was the dance, dear?”
I would mutter, “fine, fun.” We both knew it wasn’t true.
Tonight she was three thousand miles away. I could think my own thoughts, remember the fun parts of Joe’s bash, congratulate myself for being charming at a party full of young men—unlike at home where I never hung out with guys and wasn’t expected to. At least I went, I thought, I showed up. Well done, Annie. Even if Joe hadn’t seemed overly interested, even if the young man in the cardigan hadn’t come up to speak to me, as I hugged my slender waist, I willed myself to shelter a glimmer of hope. Maybe some guy will chat me up some other night in some other living room. Here in Oxford. Where at least I was hanging out with young men. Where I brought a new kind of understanding to sexy Renaissance poems. Where Mrs. Bed’s shimmering sexuality might somehow rub off on me. Where I could shimmy into a new role on a new stage.
Kaier’s work, mentioned in Best American Essays, has appeared in The New York Times, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Kenyon Review. Her memoir is Home with Henry. This is an excerpt from a memoir in progress about her years at Oxford in the 1960s.
71